1. NW flight 354 leaves at 3:54 p.m.
2. Even though I aim to be an unsentimental, future-minded cosmopolitan, I still feel a twinge of a sadness when I consider that the hometown brand, Northwest Airlines, will soon be only a memory.
3. Aisle seat. Pros: Easy exit, not flanked on both sides. Cons: Elbows get bumped when the cart comes by, nothing to lean against, have to get up if the center or window seat needs to use the lavatory. The last con can place limits on the duration of your naps.
4. The game will kill my battery, I don’t feel like writing any more, and the captain says that we’ll soon be descending, so I put away my laptop and start to space out.
I look around. “The loneliness” has waxed and waned in seemingly random fashion over the years. It’s been showing up more regularly these days, and it seems to be spiking in this moment. My eyes are grabbed by anything you might call classically feminine. I catch myself staring at the curve of a hip that is hinted at by the jeans of the woman in the aisle. The suggested form of her torso sets my heart racing. The woman in the center seat, while repositioning herself, bumps me with her elbow. I get a little electric surge from this touch.
Oh, how embarrassing to be set off so easily, to be given a significant jolt by this minor and accidental contact. At least, I think I’m supposed to be ashamed of being like this—that it’s unseemly to have, and even worse to reveal, these aches. But fuck it, it’s real, and it’s a big deal. My perpetually relationshipped acquaintances have told me not to idealize their state, and I’ve thought that some of their reasons for this position are valid, but I think that they should then not idealize the single state in return. It frustrates me when they seem to not grasp what loneliness feels like, or how crazy-making it can be. It’s survivable, but it doesn’t feel very healthy.
It’s late, the lights are dim, and I’m resting my head against the seat in front of me. The woman in the center seat is slouching and has her legs up, so that her shins are pressed against her seat-in-front, and so that her knees are at eye level when I turn my head to the right. Again, my attention is drawn to anything about her that differs from its male counterpart. The leg, much more slender than mine, that is just below eye level. I’ve noticed, lately, that the things women do to themselves in the name of beauty, once seeming just frivolous and bizarre, have become so attractive to me. The painted toenails at the end of these legs.
I sit back again. She turns to me and expresses surprise at the fullness of the flight. I respond that, actually, I’ve taken this flight many times, and it seems just as full as always. Underneath her comment was the assumption that we all live in City A, and are coming back from a visit to City B. I note that I actually live and City B, and am heading for a visit to City A. She notes that at one point, she also lived in City B. We discuss neighborhoods we both know. She asks after, and I answer with, the purpose of my visit to City A.
The conversation fades. She starts it again by saying she’s “bummed.” A friend had emailed her about the latest incident in his decaying marriage. This incident had involved a strange sort of violence, which she described to me. She is bummed because for years she thought that he was entirely the innocent party in this troubled marriage, but today, in the new email, the friend revealed that the violence was his wife’s response upon finding him texting with another woman.
I ask why she moved from City B to City A. She sighs and replies that it was to be near her husband. She elaborates. When she was away this week, she was asking herself if she really missed him. She went to a party and mentioned to someone her surprise that of all the men in City B, she married him. He’s put on a lot of weight in the last two years. He plays video games all the time. If he wants to avoid surgery for a health problem, he needs to do these exercises. He keeps saying he’s going to do the exercises, but then he never does. If she had to do it again, she wouldn’t get married, just stay committed “without the paper.”
